Charge pumps use a switching process to provide a DC output voltage larger than its DC input voltage. In general, a charge pump will have a capacitor coupled to switches between an input and an output. During one clock half cycle, the charging half cycle, the capacitor couples in parallel to the input or power supply voltage so as to charge up to the input voltage. During a second clock cycle, the transfer half cycle, the charged capacitor couples in series with the input voltage so as to provide an output voltage twice the level of the input voltage. This process is illustrated in FIGS. 1a and 1b. In FIG. 1a, the capacitor 5 is arranged in parallel with the input voltage VIN to illustrate the charging half cycle. In FIG. 1b, the charged capacitor 5 is arranged in series with the input voltage to illustrate the transfer half cycle. As seen in FIG. 1b, the positive terminal of the charged capacitor 5 will thus be 2*VIN with respect to ground.
Charge pumps are used in many contexts. For example, they are used as peripheral circuits on flash memory and other non-volatile memories to generate many of the needed operating voltages, such as programming or erase voltages, from a lower power supply voltage. A number of charge pump designs are known in the art and these use a regulation scheme to provide the desired output level. As the accuracy of the output can be important for the application in which it is being used, and as the accuracy of the output level depends on the regulation of the charge pump, there are consequently often needs to improve the ability of the regulation to track the output level.